Marya Hornbacher, who shared her struggles with bulimia in the unapologetic Wasted, now takes readers on an intense ride through her battle with bipolar disorder. She hooks readers from the start as she recalls slicing her arms open at age 20. She spends most of her life trying to placate her madness, turning to bulimia at age 9, alcohol at 10, drugs at 14. By 19, she starves herself to 52 pounds. As an adult, she sees some success and becomes a Pulitzer nominee. (She also marries three times.) But madness always wins, landing her in hospital after hospital. As Hornbacher, now 34, whips around this roller-coaster ride, her unflinching style keeps us seated firmly beside her.

When David Gilmour's 15-year-old son, Jesse, starting failing the 10th grade, the Canadian film critic/ novelist let him drop out of school. Gilmour didn't home-school him, dispatch him to boarding school, or decide there was something terribly wrong with him. Instead, Gilmour — himself struggling professionally — required Jesse to watch three movies a week with him and to not use drugs. (His ex-wife approved.) This pleasant, wise memoir describes the films they watched, ranging from Akira Kurosawa's Ran to Basic Instinct, and the chats about life, love and booze they triggered. By the end, the son finds his way. And the father is glad they shared this time.

— Deirdre Donahue

Who Do You Think You Are? By Alyse Myers Touchstone, 250 pp., $24

Mother-daughter relationships can be exquisitely complicated, some more than others. That's the message of Who Do You Think You Are?, a chilling and bittersweet debut by Alyse Myers. Now an executive with The New York Times, Myers was raised in a Queens housing project by two deeply flawed parents. As told by Myers, her mother was iron-fisted and vindictive, singling out her eldest daughter — Alyse — for the worst of her sadistic tirades. She also was incensed by Alyse's quest to make a better life for herself, a running conflict from which the title springs. Reconciliation isn't sweet in this absorbing tale of love and forgiveness, but it does eventually arrive.

— Leslie Cauley

The Dream By Harry Bernstein Ballantine, 263 pp; $24

At 96, Harry Bernstein wrote a remarkable memoir, The Invisible Wall, about his impoverished childhood in an English mill town where Jews lived on one side of the street and Christians on the other. The Dream is its worthy sequel, following Bernstein's family, and all their love and resentments, as they struggle to find a new life in America starting in 1922. It vividly portrays Bernstein's illiterate, self-sacrificing mother and his raging bull of an abusive father. It's also a love story, about how Harry meet Ruby, his wife for 67 years. Bernstein's epilogue notes, "Age is supposed to dim memory, but mine has been sharpened." The best news of all: At 98, he's writing a third memoir about Ruby's death and his dream deferred — getting published.

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